Thursday, April 15, 2010

There is an important distinction between the Thai Red Shirts and the American Tea Party movements. The Tea Parties are genuinely spontaneous and local efforts that spring from the American traditions of Direct Democracy and Civil Society institutions that can function outside of the official nodes. Despite enormous effort by the media to identify single source leaders that would link the Tea Parties to the hierarchy of the Republican Party and attempts to smear them as astroturfing they remain vibrant because they are independent and authentic.

The Thai movement taps into genuine local pressures however the movement as a whole is a construct organized by agents of China. The demonstrators in the Red Shirts are whether knowingly or not foot soldiers in the Shanghai Cooperative Organization's effort to secure control over the sea lanes so as to gain a choke hold over the oil routes that Japan depends on and to surround Vietnam.

The dichotomy between desiring a restructuring of the system that would reduce the future costs of Social Security while still accepting the benefits in the present is easily explained. There is no hypocrisy in doing so. The government set the rules and created a system in which savings were discouraged and economic growth retarded. Therefor people in their 50s through 90s are made dependent on whatever benefits they can obtain. While it is true that those same people believed the lies of the politicians they voted for in creating this system there is no reason to ask them to suffer now while we work to create a more rational system in the future.